6 Rental Homes Designed By Gods of Modernist Architecture

Architecturally significant homes aren't just for coffee-table books. They're meant to be lived in. By you. Even if just for a few inspiring nights. Here are six design escapes that will stimulate your mind and change the way you vacation.

A few years ago I rethought the whole idea of a vacation. And I realized that, for me, a holiday should be about more than a break from workaday responsibilities. It should make my fantasies come true.

If you're a Morrissey fan and you go see him play in Manchester, you'll remember it for the rest of your life. Every baseball fan worth his salted peanuts has been to Wrigley Field. Me, I like design and architecture. Sure, I can beeline to the third floor of the Museum of Modern Art or trek through the woods to Fallingwater with all the other tourists, but those are relatively fleeting and crushingly communal experiences. I want to be singularly immersed in my own poetic and inspirational visitation. I want to see and study architecture from every angle, at every time of the day: sleep in it, eat in it, draw it, and photograph it. Cosset it. Have sex in it. Have it all to myself and experience the theories of legendary architects in 3-D. That's my kind of vacation.

Perhaps you are the same. If so, we hereby present legendary design you can rent and inhabit for as long as your AmEx limit allows. The majority of these listings hardly cost more than a decent big-city hotel room, and some quite less. Every one will enlarge your world.

1. The Penfield House by Frank Lloyd Wright (Willoughby, OH)

Frank Lloyd Wright's Penfield House

Courtesy of Eric Hanson and the Louise Penfield House

Wright is architecture's Picasso, a genius and an original. His custom houses were sometimes quixotic yet always shockingly inventive and hugely influential—visit them all when you can. More than a dozen can now be rented through websites like Airbnb and VRBO or their own private sites. The living room of the Penfield House in Ohio is one of Wright's most transparent and dramatic designs, essentially a glass box, and is highlighted with a stunning suspended staircase.

(From $275 a night)

Richard Brine

2. The Cape Cod Modern House Trust (Cape Cod, MA)

Courtesy of Antoine Lorgnier and Cape Cod Modern House Trust

You don't often think of Cape Cod as a bastion of modern architecture, but lovely and inviting examples dot the rugged, secluded landscape.

Three houses owned by the Cape Cod Modern House Trust are now available for rental, and my favorite is the Hatch Cottage (Jack Hall, 1962). Built for an editor of The Nation, it's quite small—just three rooms and one bath—but it has an unparalleled setting perched a little off the ground, affording a bay view and access to a mostly vacant beach and numerous trails. Crisp, modest, warm, and sophisticated, it embodies modernism at its most life- affirming and is a beacon for those who aspire to a Thoreau-like experience.

Courtesy of Antoine Lorgnier and Cape Cod Modern House TrustCourtesy of Antoine Lorgnier and Cape Cod Modern House Trust

There are two other houses for rent in the trust, the Kugel/Gips House (Charlie Zehnder, 1970) and the Paul Weidlinger House (1953), both enviable statements of midcentury ideas cradled in nature. You'll have little to do in any of them except enjoy the scenery and relax, so bring a pile of books. If you truly must get out, the big cultural attraction might be the Wellfleet Drive-In movie theater.

(From $2,750 a week)

Courtesy of Antoine Lorgnier and Cape Cod Modern House Trust

Courtesy of Antoine Lorgnier and Cape Cod Modern House Trust

3. The Bauhaus (Dessau, Germany)

Courtesy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

Responsible for so much of the modern furniture, typography, and architecture we love today, the Bauhaus school in Germany was as influential on the world of design as the Beatles were on 20th-century music.

From 1925 to 1931, students there were educated in architecture, industrial design, metalworking, painting, photography, and even color theory and weaving. And then, in 1933, the school was closed under pressure from the Nazi regime, which considered it a threat due to its emphasis on individualism, creativity, and intellectualism.

Courtesy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

There were three campuses during its lifetime, but founder Walter Gropius designed the largest one, in Dessau, where you can now spend the night in a dorm room. It's an easy 90-minute train ride from Berlin's Zoologischer station—and upon arrival in Dessau, a pleasant 15-minute walk through the quiet little town over to the campus.

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The restored Bauhaus Building is one of the greatest and most faithful architectural restorations I have ever seen, absolutely perfect. I swear to God, the canteen looks like an Apple Store. The rooms are ridiculously affordable and spotlessly clean, with bare walls and hard floors, yet each also has a beautifully designed (of course) bed and furniture by Bauhaus designers and illustrious alumni. Communal bathrooms are down the hall.

(From $39 a night)

Marcus Hoehn

4. The Sea Ranch (Mendocino, CA)

Courtesy of Jim Alinder

No place on earth finds itself more squarely in the crosshairs of our cultural Zeitgeist than Sea Ranch on California's Sonoma-Mendocino Coast. The Golden State seems to be having more influence in popular culture than ever before, and ditto for the 1970s. Sea Ranch epitomizes both.

And the big extra ingredient is that Sea Ranch is located, duh, right on the rugged Pacific coastline, all windswept and lonely, dramatic and Rod McKuen-ly lovely. Almost every house has an enviable view, and most have the requisite period-perfect hot tub. Squint and Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw are tearing up the beach in an orange dune buggy and their Persols.

It's about 100 miles north of San Francisco, with famed vineyards and breweries nearby. Bring your own cable-knit turtleneck.

(From under $200 a night)

Gaze at any modern building and you'll see breadcrumbs leading back to Le Corbusier's desk. His continuing oracular authority verges on the sacred, so why not stay in a Corbusier-designed convent? Rooms at the Convent at La Tourette (Lyon, France) are small and monastic, but the structure remains a masterpiece of inspiration, introspection, and rejuvenation. It's your chance to get closer to God and Le Corbusier. Or are they one and the same?

(From $57 a night)

Hôtel Le Corbusier

Courtesy Hôtel Le Corbusier

Convent at La Tourette

Fred Marvaux

Hôtel Le Corbusier

Iain Masterton

Convent at La Tourette

Fred Marvaux

Alternatively, you can stay in Hôtel Le Corbusier (Marseille, France), arguably Le Corbusier's most famous creation. It's part of La Cité Radieuse (The Radiant City), which was to be the prototype for a new wave of postwar housing—a nine-story building (pictured at right and top left), with one floor of shops and a rooftop garden, that is one of the most famous and most photographed modern architectural spaces in the world. Cradle yourself in a monument; it's an erection of the senses.

(From $89 a night)

Courtesy of 432 HermosaCourtesy of 432 HermosaCourtesy of 432 HermosaCourtesy of 432 Hermosa

The phoenix-like revival of Palm Springs has been well documented and lovingly appreciated. The houses and architecture that were abandoned like bones at a barbecue during the 1980s and '90s roared back into vogue (and Vogue) as the world re-discovered midcentury modernism.

As one of the key players in the Palm Springs School, architect Donald Wexler created sublimely simple pavilions of glass and often steel. One of his most luxurious commissions was the Dinah Shore Estate (1964), smack-dab in the middle of what could be called the Beverly Hills of Palm Springs—the neighborhood of Old Las Palmas, a setting of flat labyrinthine streets and high-walled estates. Quiet and peaceful, perfect for bicycling and projectile-weeping house envy.

Did Leonardo DiCaprio buy this important home to have a party pad during Coachella? Maybe. It's hard to separate the DiCaprio mojo from your experience here. It's sexy as hell being in that hot sun and tranquil pool, and under those stars at night. If you can't get laid in this house, my friend, something is truly amiss.

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(From $3,750 a night)

Courtesy of 432 Hermosa

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